File photo: “President Trump’s ‘subservience’ to Putin is ‘humiliating’ to the US,” Joe Biden said on August 22, 2020 during his presidential campaign “Never before has an American president played such a subservient role to a Russian leader,” he was quoted as saying. Former FBI Director Robert Mueller confirmed to the US House in 2019 that Russia had blackmail leverage over Trump during the 2016 campaign.
Russian president’s spokesperson confirms the test kits were sent by Trump at a time there were shortages in the US
The Russian president’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov largely confirmed the account of Bob Woodward, whose book reveals how Trump secretly sent test kits to the Russian president for his personal use, despite US shortages.
Peskov told journalists last Thursday that “all countries tried to somehow exchange between themselves” during the early phase of the pandemic, when there was not enough equipment. “We sent a supply of ventilator units to the US, they sent these tests to us,” he said. The exchanges occurred “when the pandemic was starting”, he said, adding that at this time tests were “rare items”.
Russian president told Trump: “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you.” Woodward reported
According to Woodward, the Russian president told Trump: “I don’t want you to tell anybody because people will get mad at you.”
Woodward also reported that Trump and Putin may have spoken up to seven times on the phone since 2021, including after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Peskov, however, denied this account, saying the calls “didn’t happen”.
The details about Trump’s ties to Putin are contained in a new book by Woodward, the celebrated US reporter, who with Carl Bernstein uncovered the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of Richard Nixon as US president. Woodward has written and co-written three books about the Trump presidency. His latest work, War, puts the spotlight on the Biden presidency, and covers Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Israel’s campaign against Hamas and US domestic politics.
While the revelations of Trump’s connections to Putin shed new light on the former US president’s campaign to pressure Republicans to block military aid for Ukraine, it is thought unlikely they will harm his popularity with his base, which has held firm despite numerous scandals, criminal and civil cases and his conviction for 34 felonies in a criminal hush-money scheme to influence the result of the 2016 election.
The Guardian
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